I kept a few local salmon from last years run,I have also ised chicken pieces,a local fish monger supplies me with atlantic salmon heads and frames and snapper heads and what ever else they have filleted for the day usually get a huge esky full enough for 2-3 trips out and costs me $0
Cray Bait.
Many years back now I was part of a research program funded by FRDC (Fisheries Research & Development Corporation & Fisheries Dept WA) into use of bait within the WA Rock Lobster Industry.
I won't go too deep into the background of why, but it was basically 'international politics' with us (Oz) using disease protocols as a defacto trade tariff barrier to keep Canadian Salmon out of Oz - to shield the Tassie Farmed salmon industry from risks of an insidious disease called whirling disease, that can be transmitted within the bones of imported salmon & lives for up to 20 years in the dusty dry stream bed and reactivates within 24 hours of rain.
It causes backbone deformities in salmonids (Trout and salmon species) that cause them to swim in circles - hence the name whirling disease and for which there is no known cure.
The Canuks took us to the World Trade Court, and were threatening to get bans in place on importation of all live aquarium fish & all raw frozen north sea herring used in big quantities in the Rock Lobster industry as bait - based on the same disease protocols we were using to keep their Canadian Salmon OUT of the country.
Anyway the 5 year confidentiality agreement on this research ran out about ~1.5 decades ago, so I can spill the beans on some of what I found out from the research trials.
I worked on commercial cray boats out of Lancelin, Leeman and Geraldton & Abrolhos Islands, trialing all these different 'artificial' (non fish based) Lobster baits.
So the research program was to find alternate cost effective baits to replace what was (still is) being imported in big quantities (20,000 tonnes per annum) of North Sea Herring, and we trialed all manner of alternatives... based on chicken processing waste, along with crushed blue mussels and abalone gut etc.
Interesting aside... the Uni here in WA created a baked round orange colored bait "biscuit" that was grain protein based, and met all the dietary requirements for raising WA Rock lobsters to grow healthily... based on how aquaculture feed stocks are manufactured.
There was a LOT of brainy scientists research went into the baked biscuits!
We tested those as well alongside the other various artificial baits in many hundreds of pots, over a couple weeks...in many different locations all up and down the coast of WA and the baked biscuits caught an entire 1 rock lobster over the 2 weeks trials and hundreds of pot sets at different locations!
We reckon even that one cray, only got caught coz the pot landed on a fish, and killed it - trapped under the steel rod base of the pot, and the cray went in to the pot to eat the dead fish!
The Uni research boffins "cray biscuits", were a spectacular failure, despite the small fortune invested in their creation and the involvement of the finest scientific minds in manufacturing the biscuits!
It was a classic case of not understanding their brief (to lure crays into a pot) versus how to raise crays in a aquaculture environment on a healthy diet!.
So back to my point.
Some of the artificial baits we created, caught in cold waters of the south coast (Southern cray species) 200% of what the traditional fish based baits traditionally used by pro lobster fishers caught.
In the more southern latitudes off WA's west coast, (Lancelin Leeman) the same baits yielded 120% catch against the traditional fish based baits the skippers were using.
BUT - when I trialed the same artificial chicken processing waste and crushed blue mussel shell and abalone gut, baits off Geraldton & the Abrolhos Islands where the bulk of WA's crays are caught, they only captured about ~80% of what the fish baits the locals were using caught.
So what was concluded was that water temp and how it affects the rate of bacterial decay process underwater is what influences which bait is most effective. Also however, sea lice activity in warmer water was also a contributing factor as to how many lobster were attracted into the pot based on the rate at which the attractant baits were decimated by sea lice during the day after the pots were set and before darkness when the crays crawled looking for a feed.
The scientist in Tassie who I was working for, conducting the trials here in WA - created the baits after 2 years of tank testing various 'scents', by monitoring southern crays kept in the tank - every day for 2 years.
All manner of things were tested (including a dead cat even) from the chicken processing waste (Inghams by product of heads beaks and feet etc.. which now goes along with bread crumbs into chicken nuggets LOL) to crushed blue mussel shells and abalone gut, shark liver oil and so on and so forth.
Basically he watched & timed the response of the crays, from one end of the tank where they lived under coral rocks, and their rate of progression to the other end of the tank where the scent was introduced.
In essence a response starts with their feelers waving about in an animated fashion, (They smell food with their feelers in the wild while they are under ledges etc where you divers see them holed up all the time during daytime dives).
At night however crays will walk up to 100 meters there and back looking for a feed, based on a scientific paper from the Waterman's research facility, where they drove star pickets into the flat shelf reef out front of the facility and put trackers on top of the star pickets and little signal emitters glued to the back of the crays. One cray walked 200 meters one light.
Crays naturally eat segmented Polychaete worms at night found in ribbon weed beds, and they walk out of their daytime lairs under reef ledges, and up to on average 100meters onto the weed beds and dig the Polychaete worms out of their tubes in the sea bed with those 10 legs.
What they do with their feelers during the day is wave them about from under the reef ledges to "scent" the food smells being swept past them with ground swell & tide etc & they "differentiate" from the left or right feeler, which direction the strongest food smell is coming from - and as the sun sets they head out to go dig worms on the weed banks up to 100 meters away.
This known behavior is what the scientist monitored in their tank for 2 years of testing to determine which are the most favorable smells... what made them come out of hiding and move toward the smell the fastest. That's how he created artificial baits that in cold water attracted up to 200% of what fish baits attracted.
The 2 big favorites were blue mussel shell and abalone gut - 2 most favored natural foods of the crays besides Polychaete worms!.
But they are like the cockroaches of the sea, in that they will eat an and all decaying protein matter on the sea floor as well as their natural food prey items. Luckily for us they are tasty ocean cockroach critters, eh!.
There was however one BIG takeaway from this most interesting research.
In addition to monitoring what baits were trialed I ALSO recorded what VOLUME of bait was used, with both the artificial baits and also the cray fishers normal fish based baits.
There is undoubtedly a definite relationship between how MUCH bait you use & your catch rate irrespective of which bait you use (except for the WA Uni's orange baked grain protein biscuits which in reality could be better described as crayfish repellents!
So the upshot is - if you wanna catch more crays - use more bait!
Less bait = less crays!
It's THAT simple!.
The reality back when this research was on, was that it costs the pros back then about $14.50/kilo of crays to catch them!.
That included annual depreciation on the capital cost of the boat, license, pots, deckies wages, fuel & bait.
Out of that $14.50/kilo catch cost, the lowest individual cost was the bait itself (around $1.25 a kilo for north sea herring and Kahawai (kiwi salmon).
But bait is also the ONLY thing they can trim to save on costs as the season progresses and a lot of crays are removed from the system and sent off to market.
All the other costs are pretty much fixed!.
So most skippers taper their bait volume downward to reduce daily operating costs as the season progresses.
But - that's basically a self fulfilling prophecy, is what the research revealed... because volume of bait used is directly proportional to the amount of catch!.
So in essence as the season progresses, the skippers employ less and less bait to save on daily running costs and yield less and less catch, to the point near the end of the season some of them stay home coz they can't catch enough to be viable going out (because they are using so little bait). A little different now what with quota's
When your baits $1.20 kilo and your catch is $40+ a kilo - cutting back on bait is the LAST thing you should do if you want to catch more crays!.
So what are the takeaways from all this "interesting yarn" for cray fishers I hear you asking?.
1. The crays can and will walk at night to get a feed anything up to about 100 meters out of the reefs and into the weed beds. That's their natural behavior for digging Polychaete worms out of weed beds. This means that for safety sake if potting you don't actually have to set right in on the near shore breaks and risk your vessel and crew to retrieve pots if the swell and waves / weather picks up overnight!
You can safely pot anything up to 50meters away from a major reef break and still catch crays IF you have enough of the RIGHT sorts of bait. People tend to dive and see crays under reef ledges where they shelter during the day and then mistakenly just assume you have to pot right against the edge of the reef to catch more crays.
Then we see pots get stuck and boats capsized/crew lost etc when the inevitable happens trying to retrieve them in dangerous spots.
If you have everything else, (bait essentially) right you can be safer and set a little further away from the actual reefs, when inshore / shallow. Yes you can still drop them right on the edge safely in deeper water like the 5 fathom bank etc with much less risk using your sounder.
2. Volume of bait is crucial, the more bait you use, the more crays you will catch. Its that simple.
3. Type of bait. Pros use 3 types.
A ) Soft oily fish (Mulies) as an attractant, something the crays can smell with their 2 feelers all day on the current with tide and ground swell, that makes them hungry to head for your pot at night!
These are often already gone in warmer waters by night time due to the actions of sea lice during the day. Their action helps disperse the scent tho during the day to attract the attentions of the crays.
B ) Something for the crays to feed on during the night while they are in the pot to keep them there. Fact - if there's not enough food (bait) in the pot to feed all the crays attracted into the pot during the night - when the bait runs out, they will just get up and leave back thru the neck opening they entered thru. The are quite good at it.. they basically hover their rear end upwards with the round pleopod fins under their tails, until the tail end aims upwards at the neck hole they came in thru - then flip their tail making them shoot backwards up thru the neck hole and they leave. They do it even easier in shallow waters on a full moon night, where they can see the neck opening easier to aim their rear end at!. Pros end to use Kahawai (salmon) and frozen imported north sea herring as their overnight bait. Amateurs tend to use demersal fish frames and heads.
C ). Holding baits. In the event of bad weather, where you can't get back to your pots for up to say 3 days, you need hard baits that will keep the crays there until you do get back to haul them. Pros tend to use salmon heads dried in the sun on racks for up to a week to bring out the oils. They can do this out at the Abrolhos Islands coz being 50+NM offshore there's no flies out their to blow the heads with maggots! Probably not a great idea to try this here in Perth unless you REALLY wanna annoy ya neighbors. LOL
Back in the day they used to use cow hocks and hide as holding baits. Also roo heads & tails were popular, but when the ban came in against using anything with hair on it those holding baits all vanished. (Japanese were serving the crays whole cut down the middle with a cleaver and they saw the hair in the intestinal tract and there was a big scare at the time about Mad Cow Disease (Bovine Spongeform Encephalitis) and it maybe causing Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease.
So if your amateur potting for crays - you should try to emulate what the pros do, with the 3 different types of baits, soft oily attractant, medium demersal type fish frames and heads for overnight food and a hard holding bait for bad weather!.
I see recent mention of the anode type magnesium salt water soluble clips for releasing your floats, where pot pinching can be an issue.
Back in the late 1990's when we did the bait testing with Fisheries WA Dept and FRDC etc we did test a "similar design" soft bait timed release cylindrical spring loaded plastic bait sleeve for the oily soft mulies. It was spring loaded and put into the bait basket in the closed position with the mulies encapsulated inside it!
The idea being the magnesium "release strip/delayed trigger" (with testing & varying thickness) could be timed to spring the 2 halves of the plastic cylinder open at onset of darkness to attract the crays with the soft baits, when they are actually crawling out of their daytime lairs under the reef ledges, rather than being eaten up during the day time by the sea lice.
For what its worth they did seem to help some with increased catch rates where they were employed.
Lastly?
Loss of vessels being capsized near inshore reefs while potting seems to be on the increase a little. As stated its probably because
those who dive for crays want to save a swim by anchoring too close to the reef they intend to dive on.
But also there's a proportion of potters who set too close to inshore shallow reef systems, in the mistaken belief that's where the rays live and thus you have to drop the pots on their heads to catch them.
The truth is if you get your bait right - you can set within 25 or up to 50 meters and still catch them, when they crawl at night into the weed beds to feed.
More bait is better & more of the right baits is even better again!
Lastly, don't foul your own potting ground with yesterdays discarded bait remnants!
During the trials on one of the Pro boats at the Abrolhos Islands - we instituted a system of putting the previous days discarded bait from the bait baskets into a plastic tub on deck and emptying it elsewhere on the way back to home base - rather than over the side at each pot lift when we re-baited & re set the pots!
The catch went up and stayed up 10% overnight when we ceased fouling our own potting ground with previous days discarded bait.
Particularly in those more semi tropical waters with the stag horn corals, any discarded bait that fell down into the stag horn coral and the fish couldn't get at it - the next night crays will sit there and tease the morsels out with their legs - rather than crawl to your nearby freshly baited pot for a feed.
When you do inevitably get pots caught under reef ledges, one method that the pros employ which seems to work almost 50% of the time, is to join on another longer rope near where your floats are tied on - to give you distance and more stretch (bit like a snatch strap), but it lowers the angle of pull, and often this will be enough to slide a pot out from under a ledge when they are otherwise jammed in their tight. It also lets you work at it from a safer distance from the reef itself and any wells that might become crackers and capsize you.
I hope some of this is of interest, and helps you all increase your catches - but more importantly educates you a little on how to catch the buggers better and stay safe while doing it.
Cheers & cold beers from me - hope you all get a good feed for Christmas & all come home safe to
Yeah I saw that post on Facebook and was like TLDR someone gimme cliff notes please But saw all the posts saying thanks, it's worth the read and all his other long comments, knows his shit Best stuff on this topic I've come across
it gets taken by the sharks before it can hit the bottom. Bait use throughout the industry increased during the late 80's, and the increase of sharks following the boats seemed to parallel that. You didn't want to chance being caught out short of bait when they crawled , so we used to load up. And yes, none of those lupin-based baits were worth a pinch, did some trials with Fisheries myself over the years.
Thanks for taking the time and it was certainly worth the 5 minutes to read something with actual science and trial based experimentation....
One of my mates in the SE of South Oz is one of the best boats on the coast consistently, he's always used twice the bait we used to for the exact reasons you mention.....
1 - More bait = more crays and the cost of bait vs diesel cost is low
2 - He fishes the price, price drops below $90 he stays home but when he goes again up to 2 weeks later he'll still reguarly have a kg/pot when he is back out and going again
I always keep my old bait and burley up a snapper spot, same time/place each day it doesnt take long and you will get pinks lurking...
My mates old man used to make his own cray leg imitation flys and pull snapper off the surface using old bait and occy killed crays crushed using the method above....
Could be worth having a read for you Bodie, I think you might have given someone a bum steer on another thread that the above article will straighten your way of thinking out....
Darren253
Posts: 570
Date Joined: 23/07/16
Ford or Holden?
Lets not even get started on the imports...
DTrain
Posts: 486
Date Joined: 10/02/12
A guy on facebook did a good
A guy on facebook did a good write up about cray baits yesterday. Hopefully the link works.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/589569121144801/permalink/925201877581522/
Tradewind
Posts: 756
Date Joined: 18/09/12
I think they'll need to be a
I think they'll need to be a member of the Crayfishing WA group to see the post
Tom M
Posts: 661
Date Joined: 22/09/15
No I could read it and was
No I could read it and was not a member, excellent article and thanks for sharing
Tom M
surge
Posts: 212
Date Joined: 17/08/09
yeah right,ive been using
yeah right,ive been using hoki heads tho havnt been doing too
good.
Oceanside Tackle
Posts: 2803
Date Joined: 23/07/09
Cray Bait
Hoki Heads, Tuna Heads and Blue Macs work well.
One of our customers owns a cray boat and they are currently using Hoki Heads & Blue Macs with good results.
Oceanside Team - Specializing in Jigging for demersal, Super Deep Fishing and Cockburn Sound Pink Snapper.
Don't forget to ~ Like us on Facebook ~
Phone #(08) 9337 5682 - Shop 4/364 South Street O'Connor - OPEN 7 Days
surge
Posts: 212
Date Joined: 17/08/09
the link worked dtrain
the link worked dtrain cheers mate hopfully start bagging out now
surge
Posts: 212
Date Joined: 17/08/09
yeah ok mabe its me might be
yeah ok mabe its me might be doing somthing wrong getting alot of sea lice that wouldnt be helping
surge
Posts: 212
Date Joined: 17/08/09
yeah ok mabe its me might be
yeah ok mabe its me might be doing somthing wrong getting alot of sea lice that wouldnt be helping
Bodie
Posts: 3758
Date Joined: 05/11/07
move ur pot out off the edge
move ur pot out off the edge a little further if getting lice. usually on or close to weed.
You will get a million different answers on whats the best bait to use.
Hokie is what i use and ive caught plenty
I've used tuna heads this year as well as got plenty, main difference is they are charging too much for them now (bluewater have them for $65 a box).
Orange roughy works
Blue macks work (but breaks down quicker).
surge
Posts: 212
Date Joined: 17/08/09
cheers bodie,ill give that a
cheers bodie,ill give that a crack i got a 20kg box of blue macs for $60 today
surge
Posts: 212
Date Joined: 17/08/09
cheers bodie,ill give that a
cheers bodie,ill give that a crack i got a 20kg box of blue macs for $60 today
catchalittle
Posts: 1875
Date Joined: 04/09/08
I kept a few local salmon
I kept a few local salmon from last years run,I have also ised chicken pieces,a local fish monger supplies me with atlantic salmon heads and frames and snapper heads and what ever else they have filleted for the day usually get a huge esky full enough for 2-3 trips out and costs me $0
Nathan
NORUN NOFUN
Posts: 1035
Date Joined: 15/08/11
from link above
Cray Bait.
Many years back now I was part of a research program funded by FRDC (Fisheries Research & Development Corporation & Fisheries Dept WA) into use of bait within the WA Rock Lobster Industry.
I won't go too deep into the background of why, but it was basically 'international politics' with us (Oz) using disease protocols as a defacto trade tariff barrier to keep Canadian Salmon out of Oz - to shield the Tassie Farmed salmon industry from risks of an insidious disease called whirling disease, that can be transmitted within the bones of imported salmon & lives for up to 20 years in the dusty dry stream bed and reactivates within 24 hours of rain.
It causes backbone deformities in salmonids (Trout and salmon species) that cause them to swim in circles - hence the name whirling disease and for which there is no known cure.
The Canuks took us to the World Trade Court, and were threatening to get bans in place on importation of all live aquarium fish & all raw frozen north sea herring used in big quantities in the Rock Lobster industry as bait - based on the same disease protocols we were using to keep their Canadian Salmon OUT of the country.
Anyway the 5 year confidentiality agreement on this research ran out about ~1.5 decades ago, so I can spill the beans on some of what I found out from the research trials.
I worked on commercial cray boats out of Lancelin, Leeman and Geraldton & Abrolhos Islands, trialing all these different 'artificial' (non fish based) Lobster baits.
So the research program was to find alternate cost effective baits to replace what was (still is) being imported in big quantities (20,000 tonnes per annum) of North Sea Herring, and we trialed all manner of alternatives... based on chicken processing waste, along with crushed blue mussels and abalone gut etc.
Interesting aside... the Uni here in WA created a baked round orange colored bait "biscuit" that was grain protein based, and met all the dietary requirements for raising WA Rock lobsters to grow healthily... based on how aquaculture feed stocks are manufactured.
There was a LOT of brainy scientists research went into the baked biscuits!
We tested those as well alongside the other various artificial baits in many hundreds of pots, over a couple weeks...in many different locations all up and down the coast of WA and the baked biscuits caught an entire 1 rock lobster over the 2 weeks trials and hundreds of pot sets at different locations!
We reckon even that one cray, only got caught coz the pot landed on a fish, and killed it - trapped under the steel rod base of the pot, and the cray went in to the pot to eat the dead fish!
The Uni research boffins "cray biscuits", were a spectacular failure, despite the small fortune invested in their creation and the involvement of the finest scientific minds in manufacturing the biscuits!
It was a classic case of not understanding their brief (to lure crays into a pot) versus how to raise crays in a aquaculture environment on a healthy diet!.
So back to my point.
Some of the artificial baits we created, caught in cold waters of the south coast (Southern cray species) 200% of what the traditional fish based baits traditionally used by pro lobster fishers caught.
In the more southern latitudes off WA's west coast, (Lancelin Leeman) the same baits yielded 120% catch against the traditional fish based baits the skippers were using.
BUT - when I trialed the same artificial chicken processing waste and crushed blue mussel shell and abalone gut, baits off Geraldton & the Abrolhos Islands where the bulk of WA's crays are caught, they only captured about ~80% of what the fish baits the locals were using caught.
So what was concluded was that water temp and how it affects the rate of bacterial decay process underwater is what influences which bait is most effective. Also however, sea lice activity in warmer water was also a contributing factor as to how many lobster were attracted into the pot based on the rate at which the attractant baits were decimated by sea lice during the day after the pots were set and before darkness when the crays crawled looking for a feed.
The scientist in Tassie who I was working for, conducting the trials here in WA - created the baits after 2 years of tank testing various 'scents', by monitoring southern crays kept in the tank - every day for 2 years.
All manner of things were tested (including a dead cat even) from the chicken processing waste (Inghams by product of heads beaks and feet etc.. which now goes along with bread crumbs into chicken nuggets LOL) to crushed blue mussel shells and abalone gut, shark liver oil and so on and so forth.
Basically he watched & timed the response of the crays, from one end of the tank where they lived under coral rocks, and their rate of progression to the other end of the tank where the scent was introduced.
In essence a response starts with their feelers waving about in an animated fashion, (They smell food with their feelers in the wild while they are under ledges etc where you divers see them holed up all the time during daytime dives).
At night however crays will walk up to 100 meters there and back looking for a feed, based on a scientific paper from the Waterman's research facility, where they drove star pickets into the flat shelf reef out front of the facility and put trackers on top of the star pickets and little signal emitters glued to the back of the crays. One cray walked 200 meters one light.
Crays naturally eat segmented Polychaete worms at night found in ribbon weed beds, and they walk out of their daytime lairs under reef ledges, and up to on average 100meters onto the weed beds and dig the Polychaete worms out of their tubes in the sea bed with those 10 legs.
What they do with their feelers during the day is wave them about from under the reef ledges to "scent" the food smells being swept past them with ground swell & tide etc & they "differentiate" from the left or right feeler, which direction the strongest food smell is coming from - and as the sun sets they head out to go dig worms on the weed banks up to 100 meters away.
This known behavior is what the scientist monitored in their tank for 2 years of testing to determine which are the most favorable smells... what made them come out of hiding and move toward the smell the fastest. That's how he created artificial baits that in cold water attracted up to 200% of what fish baits attracted.
The 2 big favorites were blue mussel shell and abalone gut - 2 most favored natural foods of the crays besides Polychaete worms!.
But they are like the cockroaches of the sea, in that they will eat an and all decaying protein matter on the sea floor as well as their natural food prey items. Luckily for us they are tasty ocean cockroach critters, eh!.
There was however one BIG takeaway from this most interesting research.
In addition to monitoring what baits were trialed I ALSO recorded what VOLUME of bait was used, with both the artificial baits and also the cray fishers normal fish based baits.
There is undoubtedly a definite relationship between how MUCH bait you use & your catch rate irrespective of which bait you use (except for the WA Uni's orange baked grain protein biscuits which in reality could be better described as crayfish repellents!
So the upshot is - if you wanna catch more crays - use more bait!
Less bait = less crays!
It's THAT simple!.
The reality back when this research was on, was that it costs the pros back then about $14.50/kilo of crays to catch them!.
That included annual depreciation on the capital cost of the boat, license, pots, deckies wages, fuel & bait.
Out of that $14.50/kilo catch cost, the lowest individual cost was the bait itself (around $1.25 a kilo for north sea herring and Kahawai (kiwi salmon).
But bait is also the ONLY thing they can trim to save on costs as the season progresses and a lot of crays are removed from the system and sent off to market.
All the other costs are pretty much fixed!.
So most skippers taper their bait volume downward to reduce daily operating costs as the season progresses.
But - that's basically a self fulfilling prophecy, is what the research revealed... because volume of bait used is directly proportional to the amount of catch!.
So in essence as the season progresses, the skippers employ less and less bait to save on daily running costs and yield less and less catch, to the point near the end of the season some of them stay home coz they can't catch enough to be viable going out (because they are using so little bait). A little different now what with quota's
When your baits $1.20 kilo and your catch is $40+ a kilo - cutting back on bait is the LAST thing you should do if you want to catch more crays!.
So what are the takeaways from all this "interesting yarn" for cray fishers I hear you asking?.
1. The crays can and will walk at night to get a feed anything up to about 100 meters out of the reefs and into the weed beds. That's their natural behavior for digging Polychaete worms out of weed beds. This means that for safety sake if potting you don't actually have to set right in on the near shore breaks and risk your vessel and crew to retrieve pots if the swell and waves / weather picks up overnight!
You can safely pot anything up to 50meters away from a major reef break and still catch crays IF you have enough of the RIGHT sorts of bait. People tend to dive and see crays under reef ledges where they shelter during the day and then mistakenly just assume you have to pot right against the edge of the reef to catch more crays.
Then we see pots get stuck and boats capsized/crew lost etc when the inevitable happens trying to retrieve them in dangerous spots.
If you have everything else, (bait essentially) right you can be safer and set a little further away from the actual reefs, when inshore / shallow. Yes you can still drop them right on the edge safely in deeper water like the 5 fathom bank etc with much less risk using your sounder.
2. Volume of bait is crucial, the more bait you use, the more crays you will catch. Its that simple.
3. Type of bait. Pros use 3 types.
A ) Soft oily fish (Mulies) as an attractant, something the crays can smell with their 2 feelers all day on the current with tide and ground swell, that makes them hungry to head for your pot at night!
These are often already gone in warmer waters by night time due to the actions of sea lice during the day. Their action helps disperse the scent tho during the day to attract the attentions of the crays.
B ) Something for the crays to feed on during the night while they are in the pot to keep them there. Fact - if there's not enough food (bait) in the pot to feed all the crays attracted into the pot during the night - when the bait runs out, they will just get up and leave back thru the neck opening they entered thru. The are quite good at it.. they basically hover their rear end upwards with the round pleopod fins under their tails, until the tail end aims upwards at the neck hole they came in thru - then flip their tail making them shoot backwards up thru the neck hole and they leave. They do it even easier in shallow waters on a full moon night, where they can see the neck opening easier to aim their rear end at!. Pros end to use Kahawai (salmon) and frozen imported north sea herring as their overnight bait. Amateurs tend to use demersal fish frames and heads.
C ). Holding baits. In the event of bad weather, where you can't get back to your pots for up to say 3 days, you need hard baits that will keep the crays there until you do get back to haul them. Pros tend to use salmon heads dried in the sun on racks for up to a week to bring out the oils. They can do this out at the Abrolhos Islands coz being 50+NM offshore there's no flies out their to blow the heads with maggots! Probably not a great idea to try this here in Perth unless you REALLY wanna annoy ya neighbors. LOL
Back in the day they used to use cow hocks and hide as holding baits. Also roo heads & tails were popular, but when the ban came in against using anything with hair on it those holding baits all vanished. (Japanese were serving the crays whole cut down the middle with a cleaver and they saw the hair in the intestinal tract and there was a big scare at the time about Mad Cow Disease (Bovine Spongeform Encephalitis) and it maybe causing Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease.
So if your amateur potting for crays - you should try to emulate what the pros do, with the 3 different types of baits, soft oily attractant, medium demersal type fish frames and heads for overnight food and a hard holding bait for bad weather!.
I see recent mention of the anode type magnesium salt water soluble clips for releasing your floats, where pot pinching can be an issue.
Back in the late 1990's when we did the bait testing with Fisheries WA Dept and FRDC etc we did test a "similar design" soft bait timed release cylindrical spring loaded plastic bait sleeve for the oily soft mulies. It was spring loaded and put into the bait basket in the closed position with the mulies encapsulated inside it!
The idea being the magnesium "release strip/delayed trigger" (with testing & varying thickness) could be timed to spring the 2 halves of the plastic cylinder open at onset of darkness to attract the crays with the soft baits, when they are actually crawling out of their daytime lairs under the reef ledges, rather than being eaten up during the day time by the sea lice.
For what its worth they did seem to help some with increased catch rates where they were employed.
Lastly?
Loss of vessels being capsized near inshore reefs while potting seems to be on the increase a little. As stated its probably because
those who dive for crays want to save a swim by anchoring too close to the reef they intend to dive on.
But also there's a proportion of potters who set too close to inshore shallow reef systems, in the mistaken belief that's where the rays live and thus you have to drop the pots on their heads to catch them.
The truth is if you get your bait right - you can set within 25 or up to 50 meters and still catch them, when they crawl at night into the weed beds to feed.
More bait is better & more of the right baits is even better again!
Lastly, don't foul your own potting ground with yesterdays discarded bait remnants!
During the trials on one of the Pro boats at the Abrolhos Islands - we instituted a system of putting the previous days discarded bait from the bait baskets into a plastic tub on deck and emptying it elsewhere on the way back to home base - rather than over the side at each pot lift when we re-baited & re set the pots!
The catch went up and stayed up 10% overnight when we ceased fouling our own potting ground with previous days discarded bait.
Particularly in those more semi tropical waters with the stag horn corals, any discarded bait that fell down into the stag horn coral and the fish couldn't get at it - the next night crays will sit there and tease the morsels out with their legs - rather than crawl to your nearby freshly baited pot for a feed.
When you do inevitably get pots caught under reef ledges, one method that the pros employ which seems to work almost 50% of the time, is to join on another longer rope near where your floats are tied on - to give you distance and more stretch (bit like a snatch strap), but it lowers the angle of pull, and often this will be enough to slide a pot out from under a ledge when they are otherwise jammed in their tight. It also lets you work at it from a safer distance from the reef itself and any wells that might become crackers and capsize you.
I hope some of this is of interest, and helps you all increase your catches - but more importantly educates you a little on how to catch the buggers better and stay safe while doing it.
Cheers & cold beers from me - hope you all get a good feed for Christmas & all come home safe to
The Saint
Posts: 473
Date Joined: 30/01/13
Thanks for taking the time to
Thanks for putting that up NRNF.
Interesting reading and I don't even chase them !
Bodie
Posts: 3758
Date Joined: 05/11/07
yep not going to read all
yep not going to read all that
mc
Posts: 91
Date Joined: 10/09/13
Yeah I saw that post on
Yeah I saw that post on Facebook and was like TLDR someone gimme cliff notes please But saw all the posts saying thanks, it's worth the read and all his other long comments, knows his shit Best stuff on this topic I've come across
NORUN NOFUN
Posts: 1035
Date Joined: 15/08/11
Its actually worth putting
Its actually worth putting the effort in to read, each to their own i guess
dano83
Posts: 790
Date Joined: 25/05/12
It's a good read, cheers
It's a good read, cheers
Auslobster
Posts: 1901
Date Joined: 03/05/08
I'll condense it for you, Bodie!
Basically, use worms for cray bait!
dodgy
Posts: 4577
Date Joined: 01/02/10
He prob would of put it up
He prob would of put it up here but he is banned. Haha
Does anyone know where the love of god goes, when the waves turn the minutes to hours?
ranmar850
Posts: 2702
Date Joined: 12/08/12
Old bait doesn't stand a chance up here.
it gets taken by the sharks before it can hit the bottom. Bait use throughout the industry increased during the late 80's, and the increase of sharks following the boats seemed to parallel that. You didn't want to chance being caught out short of bait when they crawled , so we used to load up. And yes, none of those lupin-based baits were worth a pinch, did some trials with Fisheries myself over the years.
timboon
Posts: 2957
Date Joined: 14/11/10
Thanks for taking the time
Thanks for taking the time and it was certainly worth the 5 minutes to read something with actual science and trial based experimentation....
One of my mates in the SE of South Oz is one of the best boats on the coast consistently, he's always used twice the bait we used to for the exact reasons you mention.....
1 - More bait = more crays and the cost of bait vs diesel cost is low
2 - He fishes the price, price drops below $90 he stays home but when he goes again up to 2 weeks later he'll still reguarly have a kg/pot when he is back out and going again
I always keep my old bait and burley up a snapper spot, same time/place each day it doesnt take long and you will get pinks lurking...
My mates old man used to make his own cray leg imitation flys and pull snapper off the surface using old bait and occy killed crays crushed using the method above....
Could be worth having a read for you Bodie, I think you might have given someone a bum steer on another thread that the above article will straighten your way of thinking out....